Photo friends// are you regularly sharing your work somewhere other than on @instagram? I’m so over them deciding what I see and don’t see

The thread is interesting. Most photogs point to VSCO.

I think Instagram still has a long runway ahead of it. And I still think it is very, very good. However, if I had a single complaint it would be the algorithmic timeline.

If photographers begin to jettison Instagram than normals will follow 24-36 months later. I don’t see that happening with Instagram – at least not to a service like VSCO since that isn’t social enough. The masses need likes and comments (sorry Micro.blog). But there is room for something to come along and upend Instagram and it will likely be a network that is simple*.

* This is how these things work. A new app or service is created. People flock to it because it is simple. Then it grows. It tries to address the needs of a much broader audience. Then people beg for even more features. Until the breaking point. And then it starts over again somewhere else.

Instagram appears to be finally working on a native Regram button. It’s a feature many users have been waiting for for some time. Currently, users wanting to reshare content have to either save the image or video to their device and re-share it from their own account, or call upon one of several third party apps like Regram, a popular Android option.

I know some may think this would ruin Instagram but frankly I believe it could allow for things on the network to reach a much broader audience. I welcome the addition and I’m sure if Instagram ever puts this public they’ll do it as tastefully as possible. They’ve proven themselves to be able to do this with all other features so far.

By far, I believe Instagram to be the best social media sharing app going.

I’m trying my hand at Instagram again. This time I’ve created my own filter using Snapseed which I’ve named ColinGram2018. I’m taking some photos I’ve published here and re-editing them with some cropping, blurring, and using ColinGram2018 and then publishing them on the gram.

What we have right now is a minute. If we introduce longer video, we have to make it fit into the flow of Instagram in a way that makes sense. I think what might point the way is the people who use video today on Instagram. I meet these digital creators who are producing video for Instagram and they’ll often do a short cut for their Instagram feed or for Stories and point to a longer video. Often that lives on other platforms because you just can’t post them on Instagram. But the idea of a teaser plus the full piece of content, if you were interested in it, might be a future piece.

I don’t know exactly what would make sense for longer form video on Instagram but so far they’ve been making great choices. I think just being able to play videos full-screen would be enough for me. I think it’d be just fine to see longer form video on my timeline with, perhaps, the first 15 seconds as a preview or something. But I’m unsure.

Another takeaway from this interview is how Instagram has always talked about how it ripped off Snapchat. I really love the candor. They have always come right out and said that Snapchat was first. And then they back up why they’ve brought that medium to Instagram. The reason he gives is both obvious and apt; because people were already doing it by creating second accounts to share more regularly on. Now they don’t have to do that.

This is a meaningful update. Stories sucked a lot of the activity out of the feed. Being able to share Stories you find – whether they are about a place, event, an interest, a celebrity, or from a friend – means that a lot more eyeballs can be pushed around the network. In other words, a Story can now “go viral” within Instagram (and, rumor has it, soon on Facebook).

With this update, you no longer have to choose the single best photo or video from an experience you want to remember. Now, you can combine up to 10 photos and videos in one post and swipe through to see them all.

Fantastic update and finally one that is different than most, if not all, other platforms.

Facebook makes sense as the leader. More people use Facebook than YouTube. And by that, I mean we consume a lot on YouTube, most of its traffic is viewing videos, not creating. I think that most companies and influencers have a big enough audience that they can stream anywhere and their followers will…follow.

Facebook should be able to hold this top spot for some time. Their live video platform is easy to use and very, very good. Couple that with the massive audience and they have the killer live video product for a while. Also, a little birdie told me to expect Instagram-like Stories coming to Facebook soon as they are already testing this in smaller European regions. If they do that “Stories” video is going to go through the roof.

YouTube, on the other hand, is still only dabbling with live video. It seems they care more about live video for events than pushing live video from users. I’m sure this is a conscious choice. Perhaps, they’d prefer their live video to be of higher quality when they promote it. However, I just recently noticed their app has a tab (not a navigation item) for live video. I used it to watch to a few “radio” stations and someone playing a game. It was a very good experience. If, like Facebook, YouTube added that navigation item (and allowed directly sharing through Facebook and Twitter) I’d bet their numbers would sky rocket.

Dan also mentions the absence of Instagram Stories in the numbers:

Another note, I’d of thought Instagram would at least make the chart, but it’s live functions are only two and half months old. I think that they have the potential to move into third place, maybe even second.

He’s right (as always). The charts in Dan’s post are from polls conducted in November 2016. Instagram Stories hadn’t even existed yet (can you believe that?). EDIT: Instagram Stories launched in August 2016. It was Instagram Stories w/ Live video that came later. Thanks Leni. END EDIT. Already Instagram is crushing Snapchat so I expect the live video numbers to be also representative of that. By the time these polls are conducted again I’d expect Instagram Stories to rank very highly.

Another thing to note is that Twitter’s Live Video numbers are skewed slightly due to the fact that the feature for users is only available through Periscope and not yet a first-class citizen. Their live streaming video numbers — aside from Periscope — are likely due to their deals with large broadcast organizations and the NFL. If Twitter opens up live streaming video to users I’d also expect their numbers to climb. Historically Twitter hasn’t been very good at running separate brands so I think to do this they should bring Periscope into Twitter.

It is good to keep an eye on these trends as viewership shifts back and forth. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the numbers overlap somewhat but I’d love to see some statistics on how many separate and distinct live streaming video platforms users are getting their content from.

I tried to fix this by unfollowing just about everyone I know personally and following as many talented photographers as I could find. The result of that decision: enormous inspiration to get out of the house and travel, but also to a confidence-shattering reflection on my own photos. Now, instead of posting what I thought was one of my best photos, I opt to hold back because it doesn’t measure up.

His example of how his neighbor’s photo of their morning coffee garners more likes than his carefully curated vacation photo is also another type of pressure or anxiety that can come from using networks like Instagram. It is why I hate “likes”. I’ve always hated likes. When I post to Instagram I turn off commenting (same for my blog). If I could turn off likes too I would. “Likes” create a false sense of value. I’m still struggling with whether or not I want to be pulling the “likes” and “shares” back to my blog from Twitter and Facebook like I have been using the Indieweb Backfeed. I have it on right now but I’m considering turning it off. I may also turn off POSSE soon but I fear my audience will shrink substantially. This is a topic for another post.

If I could turn off commenting on Facebook I would. It isn’t because I don’t want to read people’s comments, on the contrary, I want quality comments (like the one I’m linking to from Josh right now or the one from Chris Aldrich on this same topic). Open network discussion hasn’t fostered quality discourse.

One other note about Instagram and “likes”; their feed algorithm is wreaking havoc with people’s expectations when posting to the service. People that used to get 10,000 likes per photo are now getting very disparate results. One will get a few thousand, the next 10 thousand, some nearly zero. The algorithm is choosing which photos get popped into people’s feed. Some photos are never seen by your followers. So if you were valuing your work based on “likes” you no longer can. And if you think this isn’t a problem imagine someone that makes their living based on having 7M Instagram followers that suddenly cannot guarantee their sponsors any metric at all.

I think this is why I like Instagram Stories so much. When I post to stories I see exactly who viewed each post (good) and if someone wants to reply their reply comes to me privately (also good). The drawback, however, is that the discourse that happens in private isn’t of any value to the public. I’m not sure how to fix that without reintroducing the issues we see on Facebook and Instagram.

While in some sense I do miss the beautiful Instagram feeds of yore when it was mostly professionals, it’s more interesting now with friends who use it to capture small snippets of their lives.

It seems he has had the opposite experience to the one I mentioned in my previous post; that it started out with unprofessional, filtered, photographs and has now become a network full of professionally edited photos and videos. Interesting.

“It became a place where people kept raising the bar on themselves in terms of the quality of what they had to achieve to post,” explained Kevin Weil, Instagram’s head of product, who has been working to fix this problem since joining Instagram from Twitter in early 2016. “We didn’t want that.”

I can say I’ve felt this pressure. Amazing photographers are on Instagram and the more of them I follow the less I want to post – thinking I cannot compete.

Instagram was to be a place where anyone with a smartphone could post images that looked good because you could easily apply a filter to make your photo more appealing.

More specifically, Instagram is a iPhone photo-sharing application that allows you to apply interesting filters to your photos to make them really pop. The app will be launching in the coming weeks, but as a longtime Burbn user, I’ve had the opportunity to try it out over the past few weeks. And I’m happy to report that it’s very good.

Burbn being the name of the app prior to Instagram.

I remember when people used to be called out as frauds for posting photos to Instagram that were taken with a DSLR. These days you see edited professional masterpieces.

Take a look at this video, for example, from itchban. This is a single video that was created using Adobe Premier to cut the video in half; the top is a time lapse, the bottom is slow motion. It creates a stunning effect. I really like it. But 90% of Instagram users could never pull that off – even though itchban very nicely shared this technique through their Instagram Story.

Instagram has been a tear lately. They are putting out new, and very substantial, updates very regularly. And it seems they’ve managed to decrease the pressure to create masterpieces and increase the amount of Story activity. Which, according to the above linked piece, it appears was their goal. I do fear, though, that posting photos from a smartphone to Instagram is waning rather quickly. I’m seeing so many Stories posted (which I like) but I’m seeing far less activity in the photo area.

It will be interesting to see where Instagram goes next and whether or not photo posting will still be important going forward.